was: Re: looking for MOP documentation

Michael Hudson mwh at python.net
Mon Sep 22 08:54:56 EDT 2003


Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:

> Michael Hudson wrote:
> > Of course, there's a sense in which Common Lisp just doesn't have much
> > syntax, but Python's hardly overloaded with it, either.  *The objects*
> > or to be more precise the *types* of objects themselves are what
> > determine really happens, and that's precisely the sort of thing
> > metaclasses let you play with.
> 
> I guess this might get down to the question of whether Python is
> more about the syntax, grammar, keywords, and such, of the language
> or more about the standard types of objects which are provided with
> it.  In my mind, it's very much the former and very little the
> latter, but maybe that's just me.  Dicts and lists and integers are
> interesting and all, but I'm not sure it's their behaviour which
> makes Python Python.

Fair enough.  I can see your point of view, I just don't (completely)
agree with it :-) You could have something with similar syntax,
keywords, etc to Python but semantics like C, and it would still be
horrible (IMHO).

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  In case you're not a computer person, I should probably point out
  that "Real Soon Now" is a technical term meaning "sometime before
  the heat-death of the universe, maybe".
                                     -- Scott Fahlman <sef at cs.cmu.edu>




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